Interview with Dr. Young’s #mkt420 class

Last year, I had the awesome opportunity of speaking with Dr. Elaine Young’s (@ejyoung67) Marketing Management class at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. These ’social ninjas’ are truly maximizing their use of social media tools like Twitter and Foursquare to reach target markets. But, more importantly, they are using it to market themselves.

Yes, for all you career-hungry students, it’s possible to FIND JOBS via Twitter.

By creating your own ‘personal brand’ through tweets and blogs, you can present a more holistic representation of yourself. Like it or not, your tweets, facebook profile, and blog posts portray a side of you that a traditional resume simply cannot. Whether it be your undeniable wit, stellar character, or saintly values- all these components will shine through this new digital resume of sorts. Employers are increasingly turning to these avenues to investigate the character and personality of prospective employees.

So if you haven’t cleaned up your Facebook profile or gotten a Twitter account, you really should consider! (And I’m not just saying that because we’re called CampusTweet.) Employers like seeing that their employees have personalities. The professional resume still has relevance of course. But it can’t tell your boss about the issues you’re passionate about, the TV shows you love, what you like talking about, or what will get you jumping out of your seat. Maybe you think your boss doesn’t need to know those things, but that’s beside the point. Whether you like it or not, that’s the future.

My conversation with Champlain’s social ninjas only reinforced this notion. We’ve reached a day when it’s entirely possible to access previously inaccessible people through the digital medium. Follow Ashton @aplusk. Want a job at CNN? Try tweeting @cnnbrknews. I’m not guaranteeing a response, but hey, at least you’ve got a conversation started. And with that, you’ve got a foot in the door.